I used a duplicate stitch to do this. It took me all day. Excepting lunch, dinner, dishes, and a frenzied attempt to find the power cord of my friend’s sewing machine in a loaded closet. (It was behind a stack of tubs by the very back wall.) I’m so glad I found it. Whew!

I started this shawl a couple weeks ago. I was okay until I got to the second light blue part. It is 156 stitches, a 3 stitch repeat…. Which I evidently cannot get. Somehow I developed a hole that didn’t look right maybe it was a dropped stitch so I went back stitch by stitch for three rows and started over. Ugh. Then I simply cannot keep the stitches straight and I end up with 157. And then I have to go back and fix the stitches – even though I have been saying k2 together, yarn over, knit 1 over and over. It doesn’t seem to help. Maybe I should only knit this at night after the children have gone to bed. But then I’m tired and I’m not sure I have the power to do it. I really wonder what this will look like when it’s done. If it will look alright or just dumb because of all my mistakes that I couldn’t figure out. I thought this was going to be easy.

This is my harvest from the garden today. My cherry tomato plant has been doing really well. I did select an indeterminate type. I have four other tomato plants and two have some that are ripening. I planted some determinate plants as well. Two of the plants are basically falling over with their cages.

I planted some basil … A lot of it actually but only one plant survived. Maybe next year I’ll do better at transplanting. So I was surprised because last year I also planted basil but it never really did very well.

The last time I talked to my dad in person, he said he wanted to come to the big Christmas gathering as Santa Claus. He has a long white beard now and would definitely be the part – excepting the huge belly. So I thought for his present I would make him a Santa hat.

It was an original pattern, gathering two cable patterns from my knit stitch book and composing one of my own. I made a white Pom Pom to put on the top. I hope he likes it. I’m going to make him some Christmas colored knitted driving fingerless gloves too, if I have time.